Tech News Weekly 389 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. Dan Moren of Six Colors joins me. We kick off the show talking about how Apple is making some changes to its numbering system for its software, plus loads more about WWDC. Then we talk about how YouTube really is stepping into the big time, taking over the TV, afterwards a look at how cognitive aging might be positively affected by technology use and we round things out with a story about North Korea infiltrating the US job market. Tune in for this episode of Tech News Weekly to hear about all these great stories.
This is Tech News Weekly episode 389, with Dan Moren and me, Mikah Sargent, recorded Thursday, may 29th 2025. How North Korea infiltrates US tech jobs. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where, every week, we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am your host of this, the Tech News Weekly podcast. I am back and this week, on the fifth Thursday of the month, we are joined by Six Colors East Bureau Chief and Jeopardy Champion. It's Dan Moren. How you doing, dan?
0:01:28 - Dan Moren
I'm doing okay, Mikah. It's always nice to be here on the fifth Thursday. It's so hard to say that it's like the fifth thirds day the fifth thirds day. The fifth thirds. The day of fifth thirds? No, the day of fifth thirds. I don't know what that is. I'm here, hello Hi, hello Hi.
0:01:44 - Mikah Sargent
Good to have you here and, I think, an auspicious time, given what is soon to be just around the corner. As many of you know who are tuning in because you've been here before, you know that we start off the show with our Stories of the Week with our awesome guests. Dan, I am looking forward to hearing about your story of the week.
0:02:08 - Dan Moren
My story of the week. It is. The time has revolved once again. A year has gone by and, as the prophecy is foretold, we are on the cusp of this year's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, which is kicking off in just about 10 days June 9th, I believe, in Cupertino, at which point Apple will take the wraps off of all of this year's announcements. Now, what are this year's announcements? Well, the company likes to play pretty close to the vest there, but obviously leaks get out.
A number of things expected this year, the biggest perhaps, perhaps, among which is the rumor that we will see a redesigned look and feel of Apple's operating systems across the board, so we'll see a new aesthetic to replace kind of the one that we have been using for many years. The current sort of design language evolved from iOS 7, which was a long time ago more than a decade ago at this point and it's obviously been refined over that time. But there are people who feel it's gotten a little bit long in the tooth and this year Apple seems poised to reinvent it. The rumored code name for this, I believe, solarium, which is a reference a little bit to that it. The rumored code name for this is, I believe, solarium, which is a reference a little bit to that. It is inspired by some of the look and feel that we've seen with the Apple Vision Pro, this very glass-focused feeling to what exactly things are going to look like. And so that obviously is a big deal, right, because it's the way that we all look at and interact with our software, but it is one of only a few changes that has been rumored. This other change that came out a report yesterday, I think, which originated in Bloomberg but has since been corroborated by other sources is that Apple will rename all of its operating systems.
No more will you have to figure out what number iOS you are on which does not align with what California place name macOS you are using, which does not align with the watchOS version, the tvOS version, the visionOS version, etc. Etc. Now, instead, apple will standardize that across the board with a single simple number the year, with a single simple number the year. So, yes, we're skipping straight from iOS 18 to iOS 26. 26, you might note, not this year, no, that's next year. But they're doing the car maker thing, where this year's model is actually next year, right? So it's the you know 2026 Honda Accord that gets rolled out in the fall of 2025. Why, I don't know. It's just the way these things happen. It's weird, but you know this will occur. This will be the case for everything. So iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS all of those things will have this 26 branding instead, rather than the before, where you had iOS 19 and iPadOS 19,. macOS 16, watchOS 12, tvOS 19, and visionOS 3. It's an interesting move. I don't know how I feel about it. We'll see when they actually roll it out.
It's a number's a number. I guess you kind of get used to it. My pet peeve with this one is I think they should have the apostrophe. When you abbreviate a year like 2025, you abbreviate it apostrophe 25. I don't like that. We're just calling it. The rumor is it's just straight like 26. I think it needs the apostrophe. You want an apostrophe, otherwise it just feels like a number.
0:05:45 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, I think it needs the apostrophe. What you want, an apostrophe, I just don't. Otherwise it just feels like a number.
0:05:48 - Dan Moren
Oh, but that looks so messy. I like it.
0:05:49 - Mikah Sargent
I don't know, it's so minimal.
0:05:49 - Dan Moren
Maybe I'm a stickler for feeling yeah, you're following the rules, right, well, I don't know. I mean, like I guess they could have called it iOS 2026. Would that have been better or worse? I guess at that point right.
0:06:02 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, 21H2.
0:06:04 - Dan Moren
I mean Windows didn't even stick with that. You have Windows 95, you have Windows 98, 2000. And then XP, the famous year XP yes, that's a Roman numeral there.
0:06:16 - Mikah Sargent
Vista also a Roman numeral.
0:06:19 - Dan Moren
Well, like I said, they didn't really stick with it. So, yeah, there's all this. You know the design thing, obviously big ones. There's been some other rumors as well. There was also a report this week that Apple has got a game-focused app in the works which would be sort of a central clearinghouse for things like leaderboards. It would have promotional tie-ins with Apple Arcade, it would keep track of your friend relationships, et cetera.
And if you're saying to yourself wait a second, didn't Apple used to have an app that did all that Game Center, was it? I used that? I know it's still there. It got demoted. It's no longer an app. It's now just part of the system and it's mainly a framework for developers to hook into, to add the ability like multiplayer and all those sort of functionalities like leaderboards and competitions etc. But leaderboards and competitions etc. But I think they're trying to make it be a destination this time around. I think that's kind of the goal is to have it be a place that people go I want to play a game on my phone and that they go into this app, whatever it may be called, and that will be sort of the hub.
But Apple and gaming has traditionally been something that has not really. It's not exactly peanut butter and jelly is what I'm saying. You know it's not something they've talked a lot. Every once in a while, tim Cook gets up on stage and talks about how excited he is about gaming. Nobody believes it, cause it's Tim Cook who has probably never played a video game in his life. No, he probably plays Wordle. I mean, come on.
0:07:46 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, he probably plays Wordle. But, some people don't count that right.
0:07:50 - Dan Moren
Yeah, I know, and that's fine, but he's not exactly making the case for being a passionate gamer in the way that you know, when Steve Jobs got up there and used to talk about music, right. You could tell that Steve Jobs was into music, into music. He loved music. You could talk about his enthusiasm and his passion for it. You don't get that necessarily with Coker or, I think I would argue, with any Apple executive. You see them every once in a while trying out those gaming demos and they're standing there like isn't this cool? And you're like it's very Steve Buscemi with the skateboard over his shoulder. Hello, fellow kids, right, it doesn't feel genuine and I'm not convinced that having a new gaming app is going to change that this time around. It just feels like lip service more than anything to me. But they get a shot. They get a shot to convince me. And yeah, the other big question about this year's updates.
Last year we heard about a little thing called Apple Intelligence, which you might remember. Year, we heard about a little thing called apple intelligence, which you might remember. Uh, some of those features shipped, some of them did not. Uh, and here we are. It's been a year and those promised siri features, the ones that were perhaps the most anticipated amongst everything apple talked about, never showed up. Uh, last we heard they were talking about just a little more time, a little more time. Um, you know, all by all accounts, apple's struggling a a little bit with AI in what it does, so will we hear about those this time around? Will they talk about them? Will they say those things are shipping? Will they just ignore them? Entirely Unclear.
0:09:16 - Mikah Sargent
We don't know. There haven't really been any rumors about it being part of what's you know going to be announced. That I've seen and that's a little concerning Because, yeah, arguably those features were the most compelling and certainly among the most hyped, and yet that is not what we have seen.
0:09:41 - Dan Moren
Yeah, more to the point, AI has not stood still in the meantime, right.
0:09:46 - Mikah Sargent
All those other companies are pushing forward.
0:09:47 - Dan Moren
Google had its big IO presentation with a ton of I mean, some might say too much, but a lot of AI in it.
And if you're Apple and roll around this year in, your options are well, we say nothing about AI at all Well, that doesn't look great.
Or we don't talk about the things that we announced last year Well, that's not great. And if we do talk about new things, well, people are going to be rightfully a little more skeptical this year, right, because you didn't ship everything last year. So if you start trotting out new features that you want to talk about and that you're excited about, people are going to want to see the proof, right, they're going to want to see the demos, they're going to want to see that this is real and not vaporware, and I think all of those things are challenging uphill climbs for apple when it comes to figuring out what it's doing with artificial intelligence. So that's something to look for in these announcements is what are they talking about? What are they not talking about? And you know what is kind of the positioning that they're making on staking out new ground for apple intelligence with their 26 updates? There's 26 of them, but they're called called 26.
0:10:49 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, the apostrophe 26 updates.
0:10:52 - Dan Moren
Thank you. That's why there's the apostrophe, Mike, otherwise it's ambiguous.
0:10:55 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, you're right. You know what You've convinced me. Thank you, I don't think they're going to do it.
0:10:59 - Dan Moren
I don't think they're going to do it either. I'm going to die on this hill, though It'll just be. It's a very small apostrophe-sized.
0:11:05 - Mikah Sargent
just do the sort of Douglas Adams situation of having your own brain, just add it there and so you can pretend that it's there even though it's not.
0:11:15 - Dan Moren
I'm going to have AI put it in every time. There you go, that's a. I see two birds.
0:11:19 - Mikah Sargent
Nice. Now do we think that Apple will continue the sort of secondary naming scheme of macOS, even though it's going to get a number update?
0:11:32 - Dan Moren
That's a good question. I don't know. I think on the one hand it is one of the sort of quirks you know, friendly quirks that's still there. It gives a little personality, it gives us something that feels a little less soulless, but on the other hand, one of the challenges has been keeping those straight right, like telling your Sonomas from your Sequoias right. That's tricky. I've struggled with that over time, trying to remember which version I'm running or which version something changed in. So I can understand them wanting to get away from that.
I've also seen some comments today, as I've just been looking around the internet from some developers who suggest that because some of the versioning number is tied very deeply into elements of the system and how things work internally, it may be sort of a front-facing change, but that the software itself may need to still rely on these older version numbers. So you may go into your About screen and be like iOS 26, parentheses, ios 19.0. Might happen, might happen. So, yeah, well, I guess we'll find out in about 10 days, but a lot of interesting questions circling around this year's WWDC Always an interesting show to watch, but this year I feel like a little more show to watch. But you know, this year. I feel like a little more pressure on Apple, perhaps, than usual.
0:12:54 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely, and let me remind everyone out there, if you are a member of Club Twit, very exciting for you. If you aren't, you should join because Leo Laporte and I will be doing an all-day event where, in the club exclusively, we will be doing commentary for WWDC, and and by that I mean the keynote and the follow up of the State of the Union. So we'll be around all day chatting with you all in the club, talking about what's going on and sharing.
0:13:24 - Dan Moren
I'll try to waive you guys from from the audience.
0:13:26 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, do, that'd be great. Oh, there's, dan, it's me, it's me. All right, let's take a quick break. Before we come back with my story of the week.
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Let's get back to the show. All right, we are back from the break, and that means it's time for my story of the week. For years, YouTube pitched itself as the future of entertainment. That future has arrived. Viewers now spend more time watching YouTube on their televisions than on phones or laptops. Scripted YouTube series are pulling in tens of millions of views. Ad revenue is outpacing the broadcast network combined, and creators like and let me be clear, I wrote these down, but if I'm saying I'm wrong, I'm sorry Alan, chicken Chow and Dar man are building full-blown studios to meet demand. Hollywood may still call it slop, but for younger audiences, YouTube is the new prime time.
Yeah, so this, I think, has been one of the most like something that sticks out to me that YouTube is this place where people are going not just on their phones but on their actual televisions, that they are pulling it up in front of them and watching stuff there. And there was a time where YouTube kind of struggled to convince advertisers that it had high quality content and that the big brands should be advertising on there. But I think in many cases also that it was a safe place to be putting stuff, because I remember a time when I could type in the words YouTube poop and it would just be the most bizarre, strange and at times NSFW content that was just on the platform. And imagining ads up next to some of those weird videos is hard to think about. Uh, former Time Warner executive Doug Shapiro called a lot of the content on there, quote low quality, the s-word crap, flop and garbage. Uh, but it turns out, you know, audiences aren't watching random videos on the platform, they're watching the most popular creators. They're watching the stuff that people are finding compelling and the creators that they're finding compelling. And that has made a difference. We're now kind of seeing a change in two ways because the audience is meeting these creators where they are, but now the creators are kind of meeting the audience where they are.
Alan Chicken Chow went from shorts to full-length sitcom episodes with a show called Alan's Universe that racks up tens of millions of views. Darman runs one of YouTube's biggest scripted production studios, with weekly half-hour moral lessons for Gen Z, and Chow's budget is $120,000 per episode, of course. That's versus $20 million for high-end cable shows. Despite that, his episodes pull in hundreds of millions of views even though it costs so much less. Alan Chicken Chow says there is no Disney Channel anymore as we used to know it. The 7 to 14-year-olds that used to watch Disney Channel now watch YouTube. And so, with that, YouTube has redesigned its platform for TV use, including continuous playback, longer videos, better ad formatting, and in April, YouTube accounted for more than 12% of US TV viewership. That's more than all of Disney's TV and streaming combined. 40% of that viewership came from the 18 to 49 demographic, which, of course excuse me has advertisers salivating like I was just then, apparently. So I guess I'm an advertiser. I don't know, I'll have to check on that.
But yeah, dan, I remember recently being over at actually it was at the end of this past year or at the beginning of this past year over at a friend's house this past year or at the beginning of this past year over at a friend's house, and they had turned on their smart TV, the YouTube app, and they were playing music that they wanted to listen to. But when they were done, when the song was over, then you had to go in and, with the remote done, when the song was over, then you had to go in and, with the remote, type in the name of another song and search for it and then play it, and I'm like what world is this? I don't understand. There's so much friction. I could just pull up spotify or, in my case, apple music, and we could connect it to a bluetooth speak. No, it's a whole, it's just a different I.
I apparently am not in that 18 to 49 demographic, because what is going on? I guess I am. It's a good thing, in some ways, that I'm around people who are, you know, five to 10 years younger than me with some regular occurrence, so that I am able to see, kind of how this stuff plays out. But I wanted to hear your take on it, because the fact is, it doesn't always. It's not always the case that it is that Gen Z viewership, right, I mean, this says 18 to 40 something demographic. So are you watching YouTube on your 1080p TV?
0:20:10 - Dan Moren
I'm glad that you brought me in here. As I'm noted, you know young, young whisperer that like that's my clearly I'm. I'm representing the youth demographic here in a way that you simply can't. I'm sorry, Mikah, you're just, you're just too old.
I don't get it Look nothing makes me feel like I'm going to crumble into dust faster than hearing the names of YouTube influencers, because I just don't understand, I think, what's kind of interesting about this to me. What it says is it is definitely replaced, certainly a style of TV watching that I think was more prevalent when we were younger, which was the old. There's 500 channels and nothing on kind of feeling, right. I certainly remember going to people's houses, you know friends' houses in high school and whatever, and TV would just be on. It would just be on in the background, right, and it didn't matter, or you'd be channel surfing right and flipping through and just trying to find something to watch. The TV itself was kind of a you know background, it was wallpaper, and I think YouTube has largely replaced that. The younger demographics I don't think anybody these days is sitting around channel surfing on a TV. You know who's between those ages of 18 and 49, very much I think you see a lot more people click around on YouTube and you know it's a different model, right. It's on demand in a way that it wasn't when linear television programming was the order of the day and certainly, like you said, there's a lot of stuff capitalizing on the fact that there's so much attention that you can garner much more ability to do things like scripted shows or do other things.
I don't think it necessarily is capturing certain parts of the market. I would be curious too about demographically. Demographically, the not just the ad sales, but the sort of purchasing power right, that's the thing you look at a lot in, like prestige television is some of the people who tend to watch that large, large chunks of that could be people with a lot more purchasing power, a lot more likelihood to be, you know, certain types of customers buying certain types of stuff. So I think it doesn't necessarily replace all of television, even though the numbers are very high, in the same way that when people weren't watching HBO in the 2000s, it didn't replace people like channel surfing, anyway, yeah. So I think it does seem to replace the linear TV market. I think that's what's dying. I look at broadcast network slates not infrequently, because I'm kind of curious about the state of TV these days and scripted shows have basically been, you know, if not dead, on linear TV, extremely reduced right. Everything goes to streaming now first.
So the TV itself has changed wildly in the last couple of decades and I think YouTube is certainly just a part of that and I agree it's like you said. It does seem to be changed because of the fact that the world has changed. It starts with the younger folks who are just more acclimated to that kind of thing. I know I have an almost three-year-old. He does not watch unfettered video content on anything, but the prime thing we watch with him is he likes watching trains. So we go to YouTube and find videos of trains, and I think that's how kids are just used to consuming content these days, and so it's natural that when they start making their own choices about things when they get older, that YouTube ends up being sort of the way they gravitate rather than let me just turn on the TV.
0:23:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I wanted to mention too ad revenue grew from 2019, where it was at $15 billion, to $36 billion in 2024, which means that YouTube makes more from ads than all four of those broadcast networks combined. And creators are still making less per viewer than network shows, given that they split 45% of the revenue with YouTube. But there's kind of been an interesting response from Hollywood in a way, because it's streaming slash Hollywood. Response from Hollywood in a way because it's streaming slash Hollywood.
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said YouTube is where people kill time, netflix is where people spend time, and then YouTube has been working toward getting Emmys for the different shows that exist on the platform and I think a big thing we've seen is a lot of creators building out kind of huge empires thanks to the sort of platform that they have developed on YouTube. It is an interesting difference between sort of classic network content and the way that the, because you don't see Netflix is not a place where individual creators, so to speak, are able to put their stuff right. Right, and that makes a difference and you're not going to see on NBC or ABC or something like that the same um. So it's. It's a wholly different kind of market. But to be able to make the money that is able to be made on these platforms is on this platform in particular is kind of wild. I wonder how we're going to see these classic companies working you know, classic production companies working toward making adjustments in light of this.
0:25:37 - Dan Moren
I think the evolution of it is potentially interesting too. Right, when you see some of these people get very popular and maybe not, like you know, insanely like top 10 influencers on YouTube. Popular, but like somewhere below that right, people are racking up a bunch of views. Do they choose to stick with YouTube as a platform, as some of the people here have done, or do they, you know, go on to make more lucrative deals with traditional studios and development companies? Right, like one of the examples in this article was Quinta Brunson, who did, like basically a season quote unquote of a show on YouTube before becoming super popular, and she created Abbott Elementary and went on to a more traditional role.
And some of it may be security too. Right, if you are somebody who lives and dies by views and advertising rather than having a partnership with YouTube, then it's certainly more attractive for you to go to a studio that's going to be willing to pay you maybe upfront or a share of you know proceeds or something like that a more traditional deal than it is to rely on. Well, what if I suddenly become unpopular? So I think there's a job security angle as well. And though we talked about the democratization of it and the idea that, like, if you're popular, you can do a lot. It doesn't really deal with the idea that, like, that may not be sustainable for everybody, because what happens in 20 minutes when somebody else comes along and they're more popular?
0:27:02 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's a. That's a good point. Well, we are. It's about that time to say goodbye. Dan Moore, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. Before you head out, would you like to remind everybody where they can find the great work that you are doing?
0:27:19 - Dan Moren
Absolutely. You can find everything I write about tech over at sixcolorscom. And if you want to hear my podcasts, I do a show called the Rebound every week and I do a show with Mikah called Clockwise over on RelayFM. And if you want to read my books, of which I've published many, you can find all about that and everything else I do at dmorincom.
0:27:39 - Mikah Sargent
Beautiful. Thank you, dan, we'll see you soon.
0:27:41 - Dan Moren
Thanks, Mikah, bye.
0:27:43 - Mikah Sargent
All righty folks, we're going to take another quick break before we come back with the next story.
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All right, we are back from the break and I was hoping to get the researchers on the show today for this really interesting meta-analysis, and so I want to talk about it with you all, despite the fact that we weren't able to get them on, because I think that this is just absolutely fascinating. Anytime a research piece comes up that makes you go, oh really, there's always an opportunity to get to talk about it. So, first and foremost, let me explain. I know many of you are probably familiar with studies a research study where researchers get together and they work on trying to figure out a question, they have the hypothesis right. Well, a meta-analysis is a bit different, and that's what this is.
This study is what is actually called a meta-analysis, and with meta-analyses, what one does, or what the researchers do, is they collect a bunch of different studies, all focused on the same thing, or all including data on which they're focused, and combine that together to try to get an understanding of what's going on. So a lot of times what happens is in different countries and in different locations. There will be these longevity studies. These are studies that kind of follow people over the course of their lives and during that time it will look at so many different factors about the person. And then researchers can pull from these larger studies specific data points and look at how the data kind of lines up based on a given topic.
And so with this piece we are talking about the use of technology and its effect on cognitive aging. This was done by researchers at the University of Texas, at Austin and Baylor University, and it looked at how age is affected, or rather cognitive aging is affected, by technology use. So the first generation to grow old, with smartphones, laptops and internet access, is showing a surprising trend Older adults who regularly engage with digital technologies tend to have better cognitive outcomes. A massive new meta-analysis that covers more than 400,000 people, published in the journal Nature found that technology use was not only not harmful to aging brains, but instead was associated with a significantly lower risk of cognitive decline. Now, far from fueling digital dementia, as we've heard about, everyday tech use may actually help preserve memory, attention and independence in older age. So overall, the researchers looked at 136 studies. 57 were included in the meta-analysis.
So again, you look at these multiple studies, you find the ones that have the information, the data that you need, and then you take those and combine them. What does that mean? 411,430 adults average age of 69, and a little more than half female were part of this meta-analysis, and digital engagement was broadly defined as the use of computers, smartphones, the internet, etc. As far as what they discovered, technology engagement was associated with reduced odds of cognitive decline in middle-aged and older adults. And the statistical significance was there, and by that I mean at any time in a research study you can do a certain set of calculations that determine whether there's a significance statistically to the outcome of the data or if it's just kind of random, and in this case the statistical significance was rather high.
So what do they kind of look at? Well, there were kind of two hypotheses. One was that long-term tech use weakens cognition. That's the digital dementia hypothesis. And then there's the technological reserve hypothesis, that tech engagement strengthens or preserves cognitive function. So which one is accurate? And according to the researchers, there was no credible evidence for widespread digital brain drain. Now there were some effects that remained after they kind of controlled for socioeconomic status, health conditions, education, cognitive reserve proxies, so mental stimulation from reading, puzzles, etc.
So the technology cognition association is unlikely to be explained solely by non-causal factors. What does that mean? It means that in this they looked at many of the common reasons why someone's brain or their cognitive age might be affected and tried to control for those, so meaning that those were sort of kept the same across the entire group of individuals that they looked at in order to make it possible for only this one variable to be the change between the different groups. And then, of course, there's the question okay? So we look at it and there seems to be a statistically significant trend between cognitive aging and the use of technology in a positive way. So how is it possible that tech can help with the brain? Well, here are the three proposed mechanisms for this technological reserve, as they call it. First, cognitively complex stimulation.
In the piece they talk about how digital tasks add layers of complexity, from troubleshooting to filtering distractions, which may increase mental engagement. And that, of course, means that in this case, you are not just dealing with a simple task that you may do over and over and, over and over again, but instead you are challenging your brain, your brain, because you have a tech device in front of you and because tech is the way that it is and it does what it does, that means hello, we are going to run into tech issues. And when a person solves for those tech issues, they are troubleshooting and therefore challenging their brain, increasing mental engagement. And then, on top of that, because we know that these devices are ping, ping, ting, ting, ting ting, sending us messages and notifications all the time, actively having your brain filter distractions is another way that increases mental engagement. And if you've been listening to me for a long time, you know I love to go to the evolutionary aspect of it all and our time, our much longer time as a species of hunter-gatherers, and how important it is for us to challenge our brains in the way that our brains were challenged for hundreds of thousands of years, and that means filtering distractions is a huge aspect of what our brains were designed to do, is a huge aspect of what our brains were designed to do to not be distracted by the sound of the wind rustling in the you know, the nearby grass, but instead focused on the animal that we are hunting, that we are trying to get so that our whole tribe is able to eat. That is what our brains were designed to do. Well, that's what our brains ended up being designed to do and, because of that, working toward continuing to have that is very important.
The next mechanism for the technological reserve again, this is all hypothesized is social connection, which doesn't surprise me at all. I imagine it doesn't surprise many of you at all. One study found the cognitive benefits of internet use were strongest in older adults who lived alone. So the idea, there again, if you're controlling for everything else if everyone has a relatively same education, has or doesn't have the same diseases, has or doesn't have the same access, etc. Etc. And you're only looking at this, then if the adult lived alone but had more access to and more engagement with internet use, then they were more likely to have social connection, and we know that that is an aspect, a huge aspect and a very important aspect of preventing cognitive decline. Huge aspect and a very important aspect of preventing cognitive decline. It's one of the main reasons why things like hearing aids are so important for people who are losing their hearing over time. Because you stop engaging as much, and when you stop engaging with others as much, the cognitive decline rises and rises and rises so, or raises, and so it is important that you, you know, proposing that it's important that social connection is an aspect of this and again, not surprised, I would say as an aside it's unfortunate that sometimes the social connection that takes place on the internet is scamming in nature, but if they are able to connect with loved ones, that is obviously a very positive thing.
And then, last but not least, something they call digital scaffolding Technology use could promote compensatory behaviors being able to, you know, go to a website, pay their bill, whatever it happens to be. All of these things result in someone being able to remain independent longer, and the idea there is that when you are independent, you are striving toward continuing on and doing things that need to be done there before you are challenging your brain, you are not sort of giving up that challenge and letting other people take care of it for you. So, yes, you're not going to the grocery store yourself, you're not getting up to go to the grocery store yourself, but you are still, you know, looking through, choosing the groceries that you need, having them delivered and, again, all of the other challenges that you have at home or independent, that you would not necessarily have if you lived somewhere that you know provided those things for you. Now it's important to understand that, despite all of this, the researchers posit that not all of the tech use is equal. They talk about how social media had mixed results. Three studies that they looked at showed inconsistent findings for older adults on these social media aspect, and one study noted that moderate internet usage was associated with better outcomes, but excessive usage trended toward worse outcomes. Now, again, that is one study, not the entirety of the studies that they did, but that's something to keep in mind that social media use as part of this may or may not have an impact, positive or negative. Most of the studies it's important to note were from high-income countries. That's something that is a little harder to control, for because of the fact that higher-income countries have more resources and therefore can do these kind of studies that these researchers are able to pull from. And so the question remains will these benefits hold for people who grew up with tech, not just those who adopted it later in life, and what effect does the sort of income of the country have on one's ability to access technology and therefore impact one's cognitive age?
Now, along with all of this, they looked at the kind of other findings, so contextualizing it with known dementia risks. They compared tech's protective effect to education, to physical activity, to blood pressure reduction. So how does education, how does physical activity and how does blood pressure reduction have an impact on dementia? Because we know that those are known dementia risks that lack of education, that lack of physical activity and poor blood pressure all do have an impact on, or have been shown to have an impact on, dementia risks. And they found quote the strength of association was similar to or greater than many. Strength meaning a positive trend in this case as education, as physical activity and as the reduction in blood pressure. That's pretty powerful. So go check out the study again published in Nature Human Behavior just recently and you can learn a little bit more about the way that they did this study or this meta-analysis and everything that was involved therein.
All right, we're going to take another quick break before we come back with the final story of the week. It is rather wild, so strap in for that up next.
But first let me tell you about Hoxhunt, who's bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. As a security leader, I'm talking to you. You get paid to protect your company against cyber attacks, but it's getting harder. With more cyber attacks than ever and phishing emails generated with AI Legacy one-size-fits-all awareness programs, they don't really stand a chance. They send at most four generic trainings per year and most employees ignore them. When somebody actually clicks, they're forced into embarrassing training programs that feel more like punishment. Clicks, they're forced into embarrassing training programs that feel more like punishment, and that's why more and more organizations are trying Hoxhunt. See, Hoxhunt goes beyond security awareness and changes behaviors by rewarding good clicks and coaching away the bad. Whenever an employee suspects an email might be a scam, Hoxhunt will tell them instantly, providing that dopamine rush that gets you people to click, learn and protect your company.
It was super cool talking to Hawks Hunt because we got to learn about the work that they do toward improving the sort of security knowledge of employees and hearing about the way that they've kind of gamified this for individuals and how people end up doing so well that they ask to be challenged even more and kind of go to the next level and they sort of wear this as a badge of pride that, oh yeah, hawks Hunt wasn't able to fool me here. It wasn't able to fool me here Super cool and honestly it made me go. Can I please give this? You got to challenge me. I got to know if I'm where I think I am. As an admin, hawks Hunt makes it easy to automatically deliver phishing simulations across email Slack Teams, using AI to mimic the latest real-world attacks. Simulations are personalized to each employee based on department location and more. While instant micro-trainings solidify understanding and drive lasting, safe behaviors, you can trigger gamified security awareness training that rewards employees with stars and badges, boosting completion rates and ensuring compliance. You can choose from a huge library of customizable training packages or generate your own with AI. Hoxhunt has everything you need to run effective security training in one platform, meaning it's easy to measurably reduce your human cyber risk at scale. But hey, don't take my word for it. More than 3,000 user reviews on G2 make Hoxhunt the top-rated security training platform for the enterprise, including easiest to use and best results. It's also recognized as customer's choice by Gartner, and thousands of companies like Qualcomm, aes and Nokia use it to train millions of employees all over the globe. So visit hoxhunt.com/securitynow today to learn why modern, secure companies are making the switch to Hoxhunt. That's hoxhunt.com/securitynow.
Alrighty, let's head back to the show to round out things with our final topic.
Now. As I mentioned, it was time to strap in for this story because it is, I think, quite the doozy. What looked like a side hustle for Christina Chapman managing dozens of laptops from her home turned out to be a gateway for North Korean tech workers to infiltrate the US job market. Through a sprawling scheme involving fake identities, remote access software and everyday citizens as unwitting accomplices, north Korea has funneled millions of dollars out of American companies and into its sanctioned economy. The scam reveals the vulnerabilities of modern remote work and how easily they can be exploited on a global scale. This is from the Wall Street Journal's Robert McMillan and Dustin Volz, who have written about how North Korea is using remote job work to be able to get money into its economy.
So many of you, I'm sure, are aware that sanctions are one of the main ways that we, sort of diplomatically, can have an impact on a country and have it do the things that we want it to do. And North Korea, given its behavior at all times, is a heavily sanctioned country, and so there's not a whole lot of money coming into the country and hard for the country to make money. So there are different ways that the country works to do that, including having North Koreans work in the US job market and get money. But how do they do that if you aren't allowed to hire someone from North Korea? Well, here's how there's a special setup called a laptop farm. One of those was in suburban Arizona.
Chapman, who I mentioned earlier, filled her home with laptops, accepting deliveries, installing remote access tools and managing tech support, all so North Korean workers abroad could remotely access these US jobs. In a TikTok video she said my clients are going crazy, as she had more than 10 laptops visible in the background. She'd helped send their falsified W-2 tax forms, she'd unpacked the laptops, she'd installed this remote access software and then power them on for the North Korean workers to log on, and so essentially there would just be these huge shelves that had all these laptops sitting on them. Her job was to accept delivery of all of this stuff and set it up, get it going and then just kind of let it go in the background, and then she would occasionally be messaged to follow up whatever that needed to be and then need to further go in and make different transitions and transfers of money and documents. And this is not just one place in rural Arizona.
No, the FBI estimates that North Korean workers have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars annually into the DPRK economy. Using this method, north Koreans have stolen over $6 billion in cryptocurrency. This is according to Chain Analysis and they use this cryptocurrency as a big part of their economy. Crowdstrike has found 150 plus cases of North Korean remote workers inside corporate networks, often hired through staffing agencies. They quote these DPRK IT workers are absolutely able to hold down jobs that pay in the low six figures, and sometimes they can hold multiple of these jobs, says the FBI section chief, gregory Austin. So you can imagine that multiple people working multiple jobs, having all that money filtered into the economy. So how do they go about recruiting Americans. How does an American go? You know what would be a great idea? I think that I should just go ahead and hear from someone and do all these things.
The North Koreans blanket job platforms like LinkedIn and Upwork with offers targeting people in financial distress. It turns out Chapman had completed a coding boot camp, but was living in a trailer with no heat or plumbing. When she received a LinkedIn message offering work, she said in a video in 2021 on TikTok I live in a travel trailer, I don't have running water, and now I don't have heat. I a travel trailer, I don't have running water, and now I don't have heat. I'm really scared. I don't know what to do. So, again, looking for the people who are the most vulnerable and, having completed a coding boot camp, they knew that she could, at the very least, set up a computer and add a remote access system to it.
It involves elaborate deceptions and espionage risks, so some Americans are paid to pass liveness checks or conduct job interviews on behalf of North Koreans. So, first and foremost, because there's kind of different scales and levels. Right, maybe your job is to just get this set up and that's all you have to do. Right. Maybe your job is to just get this set up and that's all you have to do. Some actually have to go as far as getting paid more to do these liveness checks, so going over to the computer and appearing in front of a webcam, something like that. Some are even doing these job interviews on behalf of the person who is actually going to be working the job and then later on that person goes to work the job. Of course, ai tools have been used to fake video during interviews, but unfortunately for the people involved in this, recruiters learned to ask candidates to wave their hands and when it comes to this AI software, it glitches it out. So we of course talked just recently where it glitches it out. So we of course talked. Just recently I had a story of the week all about how AI tools are being used for deep fakes for job interviews. That's kind of where this is really having an impact.
Once hired, then the workers will sometimes exfiltrate sensitive data, so it's not always the case that they just work the job. In some cases, it's about more than that. It's about espionage. Ryan Goldberg of Signia discovered seven stealth programs installed by a North Korean worker and said they really thought outside of the box on this. Yeah, you're telling me. So, yeah, not in every case is it just getting money that then goes into the sanctioned country, but in some cases is about getting that data for whatever purpose that might be.
And then we have to talk about the consequences for the people involved. These victims of identity theft so of course they're having to use stolen identities in order to get these jobs are often hit with unexpected tax bills. They get in trouble because it looks like they're earning in the low six figures. Chapman's Farm alone created false tax liabilities for more than 35 Americans. Companies unknowingly hired North Korean workers at major corporations, including a TV network, an aerospace firm and a Silicon Valley tech company that last one doesn't surprise me so much as the aerospace firm.
And you may be wondering about Chapman's fate. Well, first and foremost, over the course of time that Chapman ran this farm, chapman earned just under $177,000. So not a whole lot of money for the huge amount of money that she made for these workers and, you know, involved especially with the risk of doing so. As you might imagine. Chapman was charged with wire fraud, identity theft and money laundering, and Chapman pleaded guilty. She now lives in a homeless shelter in Phoenix and has sentencing set for July 16. In her final TikTok post yes, she's still posting to TikTok she said I will be back soon. It's been a hell of a roller coaster. Go read that WSJ piece, which has a lot more info not just about Chapman but about this entire situation as a whole. But I just thought, holy moly, that is wild. That North Korea, and other countries of course, have figured out how to go about doing this. And I think be mindful on LinkedIn is a huge thing to keep in mind. You never know who's actually contacting you, what their goals are, so just bear that in mind, folks. That is going to bring us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly.
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So you may have seen Leo covering Google IO covering Google IO. You will be seeing Leo and I cover, or Leo and me cover WWDC and the platform State of the Union soon. So that's all very exciting. Again, twit.tv/clubtwit to sign up and we can't wait to see you in the club. If you'd like to follow me online, I'm at Mikah Sargent on many a social media network, or you can head to chihuahua.coffee that's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-A.coffee where I've got links to the places I'm most active online, but it is time for me to say goodbye for now. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll catch you again next week for another episode of Tech News Weekly. Bye-bye, tech news weekly. Bye-bye.
0:58:24 - Leo Laporte
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